Reflections from The Hill – Prodigals – Luke 15.11-31

I love stories about prodigals, whatever their age shape, size or sexual orientation. There’s just something human about them – the going away, the messing up and the coming home; it’s so real – and I’m a sucker for real.

There are a couple of them in the Good Book; Joseph’s tale being by far the longest. Here’s a classic tale of redemption. Not only did Joseph and his brothers weep when they finally met but, over centuries, many readers done the same.

However, this wonderful story pales into insignificance when it gets stacked up against this week’s Gospel. Without a doubt, the Parable of the Prodigal Son trumps Joseph – and everything in its path.

In the popularity stakes, it might run neck and neck with the Parable of The Good Samaritan, but my money’s on The Prodigal.

If we’re not careful, though, the Prodigal can become a religious Aesop’s Fables: a challenging story with a nice moral ending. Nothing should be further from our mind.

The remarkable thing is that the Parabolic reader – you and I – can so easily identify with each of the characters. There’s not one of us who hasn’t felt the frustration of the younger brother, or had the longing, broken, heart of the father or harboured the resentments of the elder brother, whether we’re male or female.

This parable is not about something that happens to other people. It’s about us; it’s our story with all its familiar twists and turns. We inhabit its words and we live in it, which makes it easier for us to hear God’s invitation to come home.

Having said all that and established The Prodigal on the top of my all-time list of Favourites, I still think there’s a couple of issues the story raises. Let me start with the father. (I’m sure you’re aware that this Parable is often called The Parable of The Forgiving Father.)

This guy is an example of a pushover, someone who’s prepared to give their child whatever s/he wanted, even after getting an offensive mouthful from him. (By asking for his inheritance, the kid is implying that the old man is as good as dead, a suggestion hardly designed to warm parental hearts.)

Anyway, the kid gets his money, spends the lot and finally heads for home only to find his dad running to meet him. It’s the running that gets me: no self-respecting land owner would do that, not in a month of Sabbaths.

The point, dear reader, is this: with all the shenanigans about inheritances, running fathers and, eventually a banquet, we are now confronted with a different way of relating – the Kingdom way, the relationship way – a way that is contrary to and way beyond the legal logic of the world you and I usually inhabit.

Then there’s the kid himself. I’ve spent enough time around teenagers and young people to know when there’s a rat out there that’s on the nose. Honestly, do you reckon the kid was fair dinkum about his repentance? “When he came to his senses …” ain’t a story-tellers phrase, not if he wants to be honest.

At best, it’s a circumlocution, you know, one of those smart-alecky ways we have of saying something when, really, we aren’t saying anything. The kid doesn’t seem to be sorry. He only seems to be worried that his dad’s servants are better off than he is. Some repentance.

You know, we can get ourselves into a box by insisting that words get spoken out when, I reckon, the Big Fella is just – if not more – overjoyed just to have us come home. I wonder what our church life would look like then?

The other player in this Parable is the elder brother. Sure, he’s right – about himself, his wastrel brother and his ridiculously forgiving father but, then, Big Brothers can be a bit like that, can’t we? Always right.

Being more right than righteous often puts us in a place that is far removed from where we’d rather be. Sometimes being right, at the expense of being in a relationship, often sends us to a far country that is far more isolated and unforgiving than the one we left.

The father doesn’t cast the elder son away. The parable will not allow one child to be accepted and another rejected. The father calls the elder son "son" and confirms his standing within the family.

Both sons misunderstand the nature of grace. The younger seeks to manipulate, while the elder cannot let go of sacred cows of laws and grudges. Yet both are welcomed home, regardless. That’s grace and it calls us to reassess our own standards and the basis of our relationship to God.